The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe

Charles Edward Stowe

1889

Soon after the close of
the war Mrs. Stowe conceived the idea of making for herself and her family
a winter home in the South, where she might escape the rigors of Northern
winters, and where her afflicted son Frederick might enjoy an out-of-door
life throughout the year. She was also most anxious to do her share towards
educating and leading to a higher life those colored people whom she had helped
so largely to set free, and who were still in the state of profound ignorance
imposed by slavery. In writing of her hopes and plans to her brother Charles
Beecher, in 1866, she says—

"My
plan of going to Florida, as it lies in my mind, is not in any sense a mere
worldly enterprise. I have for many years had a longing to be more immediately
doing Christ's work on earth. My heart is with that poor people whose cause
in words I have tried to plead, and who now, ignorant and docile, are just
in that formative stage in which whoever seizes has them."

"Corrupt
politicians are already beginning to speculate on them as possible capital
for their schemes, and to fill their poor heads with all sorts of vagaries.
Florida is the State into which they have, more than anywhere else, been
pouring. Emigration is positively and decidedly setting that way; but as
yet it is mere worldly emigration, with the hope of making money, nothing
more."

"The
Episcopal Church is, however, undertaking, under direction of the future
Bishop of Florida, a wide-embracing scheme of Christian activity for the
whole State. In this work I desire to be associated, and my plan is to locate
at some salient point on the St. John's River, where I can form the nucleus
of a Christian neighborhood, whose influence shall be felt far beyond its
own limits."

During this year Mrs.
Stowe partially carried her plan into execution by hiring an old plantation
called "Laurel Grove," on the west side of the St. John's River,
near the present village of Orange Park. Here she established her son Frederick
as a cotton planter, and here he remained for two years. This location did
not, however, prove entirely satisfactory, nor did the raising of cotton prove
to be, under the circumstances, a profitable business. After visiting Florida
during the winter of 1866-67, at which time her attention was drawn to the
beauties and superior advantages of Mandarin on the east side of the river,
Mrs. Stowe writes from Hartford, May 29, 1867, to Rev. Charles Beecher—

My
dear Brother,—We are now thinking seriously of a place in Mandarin
much more beautiful than any other in the vicinity. It has on it five large
date palms, an olive tree in full bearing, besides a fine orange grove which
this year will yield about seventy-five thousand oranges. If we get that,
then I want you to consider the expediency of buying the one next to it.
It contains about two hundred acres of land, on which is a fine orange grove,
the fruit from which last year brought in two thousand dollars as sold at
the wharf. It is right on the river, and four steamboats pass it each week,
on their way to Savannah and Charleston. There is on the place a very comfortable
cottage, as houses go out there, where they do not need to be built as substantially
as with us.

I
am now in correspondence with the Bishop of Florida, with a view to establishing
a line of churches along the St. John's River, and if I settle at Mandarin,
it will be one of my stations. Will you consent to enter the Episcopal Church
and be our clergyman? You are just the man we want. If my tasks and feelings
did not incline me toward the Church, I should still choose it as the best
system for training immature minds such as those of our negroes. The system
was composed with reference to the wants of the laboring class of England,
at a time when they were as ignorant as our negroes now are.

I
long to be at this work, and cannot think of it without my heart burning
within me. Still I leave all with my God, and only hope He will open the
way for me to do all that I want to for this poor people.

Affectionately yours,

H. B.STOWE.

Mrs. Stowe had some years
before this joined the Episcopal Church, for the sake of attending the same
communion as her daughters, who were Episcopalians. Her brother Charles did
not, however, see fit to change his creed, and though he went to Florida he
settled a hundred and sixty miles west from the St. John's River, at Newport,
near St. Marks, on the Gulf coast, and about twenty miles from Tallahassee.
Here he lived every winter and several summers for fifteen years, and here
he left the impress of his own remarkably sweet and lovely character upon
the scattered population of the entire region.

Mrs. Stowe in the mean
time purchased the property, with its orange grove and comfortable cottage,
that she had recommended to him, and thus Mandarin became her winter home.
No one who has ever seen it can forget the peaceful beauty of this Florida
home and its surroundings. The house, a story and a half cottage of many gables,
stands on a bluff overlooking the broad St. John's, which is five miles wide
at this point. It nestles in the shade of a grove of superb, moss-hung live-oaks,
around one of which the front piazza is built. Several fine old orange trees
also stand near the cottage, scenting the air with the sweet perfume of their
blossoms in the early spring, and offering their golden fruit to whoever may
choose to pluck it during the winter months. Back of the house stretches the
well-tended orange grove in which Mrs. Stowe took such genuine pride and pleasure.
Everywhere about the dwelling and within it were flowers and singing birds,
while the rose garden in front, at the foot of the bluff, was the admiration
of all who saw it.

Here, on the front piazza,
beneath the grand oaks, looking out on the calm sunlit river, Professor Stowe
enjoyed that absolute peace and restful quiet for which his scholarly nature
had always longed, but which had been forbidden to the greater part of his
active life. At almost any hour of the day the well-known figure, with snow-white,
patriarchal beard and kindly face, might be seen sitting there, with a basket
of books, many of them in dead and nearly forgotten languages, close at hand.
An amusing incident of family life was as follows: Some Northern visitors
seemed to think that the family had no rights which were worthy of a moment's
consideration. They would land at the wharf, roam about the place, pick flowers,
peer into the house through the windows and doors, and act with that disregard
of all the proprieties of life which characterizes ill-bred people when on
a journey. The professor had been driven well-nigh distracted by these migratory
bipeds. One day, when one of them broke a branch from an orange tree directly
before his eyes, and was bearing it off in triumph with all its load of golden
fruit, he leaped from his chair, and addressed the astonished individual on
those fundamental principles of common honesty, which he deemed outraged by
this act. The address was vigorous and truthful, but of a kind which will
not bear repeating, "Why," said the horror-stricken culprit, "I
thought that this was Mrs. Stowe's place!" "You thought it was Mrs.
Stowe's place!" Then, in a voice of thunder, "I would have you understand,
sir, that I am the proprietor and protector of Mrs. Stowe and of this place,
and if you commit any more such shameful depredations I will have you punished
as you deserve!" Thus this predatory Yankee was taught to realize that
there is a God in Israel.

In April, 1869, Mrs. Stowe
was obliged to hurry North in order to visit Canada in time to protect her
English rights in "Oldtown Folks," which she had just finished.

About this time she secured
a plot of land, and made arrangements for the erection on it of a building
that should be used as a schoolhouse through the week, and as a church on
Sunday. For several years Professor Stowe preached during the winter in this
little schoolhouse, and Mrs. Stowe conducted Sunday-school, sewing classes,
singing classes, and various other gatherings for instruction and amusement,
all of which were well attended and highly appreciated by both the white and
colored residents of the neighborhood.

Upon one occasion, having
just arrived at her Mandarin home, Mrs. Stowe writes—

"At
last, after waiting a day and a half in Charleston, we arrived here about
ten o'clock Saturday morning, just a week from the day we sailed. The house
looked so pretty, and quiet, and restful, the day was so calm and lovely,
it seemed as though I had passed away from all trouble, and was looking
back upon you all from a secure resting- place. Mr. Stowe is very happy
here, and is constantly saying how pleasant it is, and how glad he is that
he is here. He is so much improved in health that already he is able to
take a considerable walk every day."

"We
are all well, contented, and happy, and we have six birds, two dogs, and a pony.
Do write more and oftener. Tell me all the little nothings and nowheres. You
can't imagine how they are magnified by the time they have reached into this
remote corner."

In 1872 she wrote a series
of Florida sketches, which were published in book form, the following year,
by J. E. Osgood & Co., under the title of "Palmetto Leaves." May
19, 1873, she writes to her brother Charles at Newport, Fla.—

"Although
you have not answered my last letter, I cannot leave Florida without saying
good-by. I send you the 'Palmetto Leaves' and my parting love. If I could
either have brought or left my husband, I should have come to see you this
winter. The account of your roses fills me with envy."

"We
leave on the San Jacinto next Saturday, and I am making the most of the
few charming hours yet left; for never did we have so delicious a spring.
I never knew such altogether perfect weather. It is enough to make a saint
out of the toughest old Calvinist that ever set his face as a flint. How
do you think New England theology would have fared if our fathers had been
landed here instead of on Plymouth Rock?"

"The next you hear
of me will be at the North, where our address is Forest Street, Hartford.
We have bought a pretty cottage there, near to Belle, and shall spend the
summer there."

In a letter written in
May of the following year to her son Charles, at Harvard, Mrs. Stowe says:

"I can hardly realize that this long, flowery summer, with its procession
of blooms and fruit, has been running on at the same time with the snowbanks
and sleet storms of the North. But so it is. It is now the first of May. Strawberries
and blackberries are over with us; oranges are in a waning condition, few
and far between. Now we are going North to begin another summer, and have
roses, strawberries, blackberries, and green peas come again.

"I am glad to hear
of your reading. The effect produced on you by Jonathan Edwards is very similar
to that produced on me when I took the same mental bath. His was a mind whose
grasp and intensity you cannot help feeling. He was a poet in the intensity
of his conceptions, and some of his sermons are more terrible than Dante's
'Inferno.'"

In November, 1874, upon
their return to Mandarin, she writes:

"We
have had heavenly weather, and we needed it: for our house was a cave of spider-webs,
cockroaches, dirt, and all abominations, but less than a week has brought it
into beautiful order. It now begins to put on that quaint, lively, pretty air
that so fascinates me. Our weather is, as I said, heavenly, neither hot nor
cold; cool, calm, bright, serene, and so tranquillizing. There is something
indescribable about the best weather we have down here. It does not debilitate
me like the soft October air in Hartford."

During the following February,
she writes in reply to an invitation to visit a Northern watering place later
in the season:

"I shall be most happy to come, and know of nothing
to prevent. I have, thank goodness, no serial story on hand for this summer,
to hang like an Old Man of the Sea about my neck, and hope to enjoy a little
season of being like other folks. It is a most lovely day to-day, most unfallen
Eden-like."

In a letter written later
in the same season, March 28, 1875, Mrs. Stowe gives us a pleasant glimpse
at their preparations for the proper observance of Easter Sunday in the little
Mandarin schoolhouse. She says—

"It
was the week before Easter, and we had on our minds the dressing of the
church. There my two Gothic fireboards were to be turned into a pulpit for
the occasion. I went to Jacksonville and got a five inch moulding for a
base, and then had one fireboard sawed in two, so that there was an arched
panel for each end. Then came a rummage for something for a top, and to
make a desk of, until it suddenly occurred to me that our old black walnut
extension table had a set of leaves. They were exactly the thing. The whole
was trimmed with a beading of yellow pine, and rubbed, and pumice-stoned,
and oiled, and I got out my tubes of paint and painted the nail-holes with
Vandyke brown. By Saturday morning it was a lovely little Gothic pulpit,
and Anthony carried it over to the schoolhouse and took away the old desk
which I gave him for his meeting-house. That afternoon we drove out into
the woods and gathered a quantity of superb Easter lilies, papaw, sparkleberry,
great fern-leaves, and cedar. In the evening the girls went over to the
Meads to practice Easter hymns; but I sat at home and made a cross, eighteen
inches long, of cedar and white lilies. This Southern cedar is the most
exquisite thing; it is so feathery and delicate."

"Sunday morning was
cool and bright, a most perfect Easter. Our little church was full, and everybody
seemed delighted with the decorations. Mr. Stowe preached a sermon to show
that Christ is going to put everything right at last, which is comforting.
So the day was one of real pleasure, and also I trust of real benefit, to
the poor souls who learned from it that Christ is indeed risen for them"

During this winter the following characteristic letters passed between Mrs. Stowe and her valued friend, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, called forth by the sending to the latter of a volume of Mrs. Stowe's latest stories—

Boston, January 8, 1876.

My dear Mrs. Stowe,—I
would not write to thank you for your most welcome "Christmas Box,"

"A box whose sweets compacted lie,"

before I had read it,
and every word of it. I have been very much taken up with antics of one kind
and another, and have only finished it this afternoon. The last of the papers
was of less comparative value to me than to a great fraction of your immense
parish of readers, because I am so familiar with every movement of the Pilgrims
in their own chronicles.

"Deacon Pitkin's
Farm" is full of those thoroughly truthful touches of New England in
which, if you are not unrivaled, I do not know who your rival may be. I wiped
the tears from one eye in reading "Deacon Pitkin's Farm."

I wiped the tears, and
plenty of them, from both eyes, in reading "Betty's Bright Idea."
It is a most charming and touching story, and nobody can read who has not
a heart like a pebble, without being melted into tenderness.

How much you have done
and are doing to make our New England life wholesome and happy! If there is
any one who can look back over a literary life which has pictured our old
and helped our new civilization, it is yourself. Of course your later books
have harder work cut out for them than those of any other writer. They have
had "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for a rival. The brightest torch casts a
shadow in the blaze of a light, and any transcendent success affords the easiest
handle for that class of critics whose method is the one that Dogberry held
to be "odious."

I
think it grows pleasanter to us to be remembered by the friends we still have,
as with each year they grow fewer. We have lost Agassiz and Sumner from our
circle, and I found Motley stricken with threatening illness (which I hope is
gradually yielding to treatment), in the profoundest grief at the loss of his
wife, another old and dear friend of mine. So you may be assured that I feel
most sensibly your kind attention, and send you my heartfelt thanks for remembering
me.

Always, dear Mrs. Stowe, faithfully yours,

O. W. HOLMES.

To this letter Mrs. Stowe replied as follows—

MANDARIN, February 23, 1876.

DEAR
DOCTOR,—How kind it was of you to write me that very beautiful note!
and how I wish you were just where I am, to see the trees laden at the same
time with golden oranges and white blossoms! I should so like to cut off
a golden cluster, leaves and all, for you. Well, Boston seems very far away
and dreamy, like some previous state of existence, as I sit on the veranda
and gaze on the receding shores of the St. John's, which at this point is
five miles wide.

Dear
doctor, how time slips by! I remember when Sumner seemed to me a young man,
and now he has gone. And Wilson has gone, and Chase, whom I knew as a young
man in society in Cincinnati, has gone, and Stanton has gone, and Seward has
gone, and yet how lively the world races on! A few air-bubbles of praise or
lamentation, and away sails the great ship of life, no matter over whose grave!

Well, one cannot but feel
it! To me, also, a whole generation of friends has gone from the other side
of the water since I was there and broke kindly bread with them. The Duchess
of Sutherland, the good old duke, Lansdowne, Ellesmere, Lady Byron, Lord and
Lady Amberly, Charles Kingsley, the good Quaker, Joseph Sturge, all are with
the shadowy train that has moved on. Among them were as dear and true friends
as I ever had, and as pure and noble specimens of human beings as God ever
made. They are living somewhere in intense vitality, I must believe, and you,
dear doctor, must not doubt.

I think about your writings
a great deal, and one element in them always attracts me. It is their pitiful
and sympathetic vein, the pity for poor, struggling human nature. In this
I feel that you must be very near and dear to Him whose name is Love.

You wrote some verses
once that have got into the hymn-books, and have often occurred to me in my
most sacred hours as descriptive of the feelings with which I bear the sorrows
and carry the cares of life. They begin—

"Love Divine, that
stooped to share."

I have not all your books
down here, and am haunted by gaps in the verses that memory cannot make good;
but it is that "Love Divine" which is my stay and comfort and hope,
as one friend after another passes beyond sight and hearing. Please let me
have it in your handwriting.

I remember a remark you
once made on spiritualism. I cannot recall the words, but you spoke of it
as modifying the sharp angles of Calvinistic belief, as a fog does those of
a landscape. I would like to talk with you some time on spiritualism, and
show you a collection of very curious facts that I have acquired through mediums
not professional. Mr. Stowe has just been wading through eight volumes of
"La Mystique," by Goerres, professor for forty years past in the
University of Munich, first of physiology and latterly of philosophy. He examines
the whole cycle of abnormal psychic, spiritual facts, trances, ecstasy, clairvoyance,
witchcraft, spiritualism, etc., etc., as shown in the Romish miracles and
the history of Europe.

I have long since come
to the conclusion that the marvels of spiritualism are natural, and not supernatural,
phenomena,—an uncommon working of natural laws. I believe that the door
between those in the body and those out has never in any age
been entirely closed, and that occasional perceptions within the veil are
a part of the course of nature, and therefore not miraculous. Of course such
a phase of human experience is very substantial ground for every kind of imposture
and superstition, and I have no faith whatever in mediums who practice for
money. In their case I think the law of Moses, that forbade consulting those
who dealt with "familiar spirits," a very wise one.

Do
write some more, dear doctor. You are too well off in your palace down there
on the new land. Your Centennial Ballad was a charming little peep; now
give us a full-fledged story. Mr. Stowe sends his best regards, and wishes
you would read "Goerres." It is in French also, and he
thinks the French translation better than the German.

Yours ever truly,

H. B. STOWE.

Writing in the autumn
of 1876 to her son Charles, who was at that time abroad, studying at Bonn,
Mrs. Stowe describes a most tempestuous passage between New York and Charleston,
during which she and her husband and daughters suffered so much that they
were ready to forswear the sea forever. The great waves as they rushed, boiling
and seething, past would peer in at the little bull's-eye window of the state-room,
as if eager to swallow up ship and passengers. From Charleston, however, they
had a most delightful run to their journey's end. She writes—"We
had a triumphal entrance into the St. John's, and a glorious sail up the river.
Arriving at Mandarin, at four o'clock, we found all the neighbors, black as
well as white, on the wharf to receive us. There was a great waving of handkerchiefs
and flags, clapping of hands and cheering, as we drew near. The house was
open and all ready for us, and we are delighted to be once more in our beautiful
Florida home."

In the following December
she writes to her son—

"I am again entangled in writing a serial, a thing
I never mean to do again, but the story, begun for a mere Christmas brochure,
grew so under my hands that I thought I might as well fill it out and make
a book of it. It is the last thing of the kind I ever expect to do. In it
I condense my recollections of a bygone era, that in which I was brought up,
the ways and manners of which are now as nearly obsolete as the Old England
of Dickens's stories is."

"I am so hampered
by the necessity of writing this story, that I am obliged to give up company
and visiting of all kinds and keep my strength for it. I hope I may be able
to finish it, as I greatly desire to do so, but I begin to feel that I am
not so strong as I used to be. Your mother is an old woman, Charley mine,
and it is best she should give up writing before people are tired of reading
her."

"I would much rather
have written another such a book as 'Footsteps of the Master,' but all, even
the religious papers, are gone mad on serials. Serials they demand and will
have, and I thought, since this generation will listen to nothing but stories,
why not tell them?"

The book thus referred
to was "Poganuc People," that series of delightful reminiscences
of the New England life of nearly a century ago, that has proved so fascinating
to many thousands of readers. It was published in 1878, and, as Mrs. Stowe
foresaw, was her last literary undertaking of any length, though for several
years afterwards she wrote occasional short stories and articles.

In January, 1879, she
wrote from Mandarin to Dr. Holmes—

DEAR DOCTOR,—I wish
I could give to you and Mrs. Holmes the exquisite charm of this morning. My
window is wide open; it is a lovely, fresh, sunny day, and a great orange
tree hung with golden balls closes the prospect from my window. The tree is
about thirty feet high, and its leaves fairly glisten in the sunshine.

I sent "Poganuc
People" to you and Mrs. Holmes as being among the few who know those
old days. It is an extremely quiet story for these sensational days, when
heaven and earth seem to be racked for a thrill; but as I get old I do love
to think of those quiet, simple times when there was not a poor person in
the parish, and the changing glories of the year were the only spectacle.
We, that is the professor and myself, have been reading with much interest
Motley's Memoir. That was a man to be proud of, a beauty, too (by your engraving),
I never had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance.

I feel with you that we
have come into the land of leave-taking. Hardly a paper but records the death
of some of Mr. Stowe's associates. But the river is not so black as it seems,
and there are clear days when the opposite shore is plainly visible, and now
and then we catch a strain of music, perhaps even a gesture of recognition.
They are thinking of us, without doubt, on the other side. My daughters and
I have been reading "Elsie Venner" again. Elsie is one of my especial
friends,—poor, dear child!—and all your theology in that book
I subscribe to with both hands.

Does not the Bible plainly
tell us of a time when there shall be no more pain? That is to be the end
and crown of the Messiah's mission, when God shall wipe all tears away. My
face is set that way, and yours, too, I trust and believe.

Mr. Stowe sends hearty
and affectionate remembrance both to you and Mrs. Holmes, and I am, as ever,
truly yours,

H. B. STOWE.

About this time Mrs. Stowe
paid a visit to her brother Charles, at Newport, Fla., and, continuing her
journey to New Orleans, was made to feel how little of bitterness towards
her was felt by the best class of Southerners, In both New Orleans and Tallahassee
she was warmly welcomed, and tendered public receptions that gave equal pleasure
to her and to the throngs of cultivated people who attended them. She was
also greeted everywhere with intense enthusiasm by the colored people, who,
whenever they knew of her coming, thronged the railway stations in order to
obtain a glimpse of her whom they venerated above all women.

The return to her Mandarin
home each succeeding winter was always a source of intense pleasure to this
true lover of nature in its brightest and tenderest moods. Each recurring
season was filled with new delights. In December, 1879, she writes to her
son, now married and settled as a minister in Saco, ME.—

DEAR CHILDREN,—Well,
we have stepped from December to June, and this morning is sunny and dewy,
with a fresh sea-breeze giving life to the air. I have just been out to cut
a great bunch of roses and lilies, though the garden is grown into such a
jungle that I could hardly get about in it. The cannas, and dwarf bananas,
and roses are all tangled together, so that I can hardly thread my way among
them. I never in my life saw anything range and run rampant over the ground
as cannas do. The ground is littered with fallen oranges, and the place looks
shockingly untidy, but so beautiful that I am quite willing to forgive its
disorder.

We got here Wednesday
evening about nine o'clock, and found all the neighbors waiting to welcome
us on the wharf. The Meads, and Cranes, and Webbs, and all the rest were there,
while the black population was in a frenzy of joy. Your father is quite well.
The sea had its usual exhilarating effect upon him. Before we left New York
he was quite meek, and exhibited such signs of grace and submission that I
had great hopes of him. He promised to do exactly as I told him, and stated
that he had entire confidence in my guidance. What woman couldn't call such
a spirit evidence of being prepared for speedy translation? I was almost afraid
he could not be long for this world. But on the second day at sea his spirits
rose, and his appetite reasserted itself. He declared in loud tones how well
he felt, and quite resented my efforts to take care of him. I reminded him
of his gracious vows and promises in the days of his low spirits, but to no
effect. The fact is, his self-will has not left him yet, and I have now no
fear of his immediate translation. He is going to preach for us this morning.

The last winter passed in
this well-loved Southern home was that of 1883-84, for the following season
Professor Stowe's health was in too precarious a state to permit him to undertake
the long journey from Hartford. By this time one of Mrs. Stowe's fondest hopes
had been realized; and, largely through her efforts, Mandarin had been provided
with a pretty little Episcopal church, to which was attached a comfortable rectory,
and over which was installed a regular clergy-man.

In January, 1884, Mrs.
Stowe writes—

"Mandarin
looks very gay and airy now with its new villas, and our new church and
rectory. Our minister is perfect. I wish you could know him. He wants only
physical strength. In everything else he is all one could ask.

"It is a bright,
lovely morning, and four orange-pickers are busy gathering our fruit. Our
trees on the bluff have done better than any in Florida.

"This winter I study
nothing but Christ's life. First I read Farrar's account and went over it
carefully. Now I am reading Geikie. It keeps my mind steady, and helps me
to bear the languor and pain, of which I have more than usual this winter."